I am still dragging my heels on artifact analysis. I suspect this is because I decided the best topics for my artifact analysis only recently. You see, there is a lot of Steampunk artifacts out there. Too many to categorize, as shown by my  experiment, Rate My Steampunk!, where I asked people to rate the artifacts I posted.

While preparing for my IST Conference presentation, however, I was speaking to Ben about the difficulties of showing exactly what I mean about how people appropriate to fit their personal identity, or what they would like to portray about their personal identity. During this conversation, it struck me that I should be comparing artifacts that have the same starting point, but end up looking very different depending on the person. How better to showcase the way appropriations can signify personal identity, than to do a direct comparison of the decisions people make when making something their own?

Therefore, my artifact analysis will focus on a particular subset for explicit comparison/contrast. I’m excited. This will be fun!